The IHR 2008 Distinguished Lecturer
This major annual university and community event will feature a national or international scholar focusing on the human dimensions of an emerging socio-cultural issue.
2008 Lecture
“The Humanities and the Limits of the Human”
The IHR is pleased to welcome Dr. Michael Bérubé, Paterno Family Professor in Literature, Department of English, and Co-Director, Disability Studies Program, Pennsylvania State University, as the 2008 IHR Distinguished Lecturer.
Michael Bérubé is the author of six books to date: Marginal Forces / Cultural Centers: Tolson, Pynchon, and the Politics of the Canon (Cornell University Press, 1992); Public Access: Literary Theory and American Cultural Politics (Verso, 1994); Life As We Know It: A Father, A Family, and an Exceptional Child (Pantheon, 1996; paper edition, Vintage, 1998); The Employment of English: Theory, Jobs, and the Future of Literary Studies (New York University Press, 1998); What’s Liberal About the Liberal Arts? Classroom Politics and “ Bias” in Higher Education (W. W. Norton, 2006) and Rhetorical Occasions: Essays on Humans and the Humanities (University of North Carolina Press, 2006). He is also the editor of The Aesthetics of Cultural Studies (Blackwell, 2004), and, with Cary Nelson, of Higher Education Under Fire: Politics, Economics, and the Crisis of the Humanities (Routledge, 1995). Bérubé has written over 150 essays for a wide variety of academic journals such as American Quarterly, the Yale Journal of Criticism, Social Text, Modern Fiction Studies, and the minnesota review, as well as more popular venues such as Harper's, the New Yorker, Dissent, The New York Times Magazine, the Washington Post, the Nation, and the Boston Globe.
Life As We Know It was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year for 1996 and was chosen as one of the best books of the year (on a list of seven) by Maureen Corrigan of National Public Radio.
2007 Lecture
Dr. Marjorie Garber, William R. Kenan, Jr., Professor of English and American Literature and Language and of Visual and Environmental Studies at Harvard University, where she is also Chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies and Director of the Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts.Harvard University.
After the Humanities
What is the relation of the humanities today to the sciences, the social sciences, or the creative arts? At the same time that their boundaries are being breached and expanded by adjacent disciplines, the humanities are under persistent critique for two paradoxical reasons: first, that they are not relevant to present-day concerns, and second, that their interest in relevancy devalues traditional works and approaches. How have changes in the structure and content of higher education, and, indeed, the goals and strategies of universities and colleges, affected the standing and nature of the humanities? What comes after the humanities—both within university culture, and in the professional, social, and political world?
2006 Lecture
Dr. Judith Butler, Maxine Elliot Professor in the Departments of Rhetoric and Comparative Literature, University of California Berkeley.
Academic Norms and Critical Inquiry: Challenges for Difficult Times
Recent debates suggest that "academic freedom" is a concept used by both liberal and conservative intellectuals, characterizing very different
ideals for academic education. But what kind of "freedom" is at stake for both of these positions? Is there a critical position to be formulated that sidesteps the impasses produced by both liberal and conservative views on this question? And how do debates on academic freedom fit into larger political struggles over state control and surveillance as well as new rights discourses? What challenges have gender and sexuality studies posed to disciplinary paradigms? This talk will address these questions and others of critical interest in the humanities.